Loading boot assembly



April 194.4; c. c. oTTosoN 2,345,990

LOADING BOOT ASSEMBLY Filed Oct. 5, 1941 4 Sheets-Sheet l 1 a vwa/wto a April 4, 1944.

c. c. OTTOSON LOADING BOOT ASSEMBLY Filed Oct. 3, 1941 4 Sheets-Sheet 2 April 4, 1944.

C. C. OTTOSON LOADING BOOT ASSEMBLY 4 Sheets-Sheet 3 Filed 001;. 3, 1941 April 1944,

c. c. OTTOSON' 2,345,990

LOADING BOOT ASSEMBLY Filed oci. :5, 1941 4 sheet 4 mlll lllll H' m PL 6. O /V,

Patented Apr. 4, 1944- 2,345,990 LOADING BOOT ASSEMBLY Carl C. Ottoson, Port Richmond, Staten Island, N. Y.

Application October 3, 1941, Serial No. 413,523

8 Claims.

This invention relates to refuse collecting vehicles of the, type provided with an endless conveyor having a downward extension, and a cooperating loading boot, near the ground, into which refuse may be dumped; the refuse is carried upwardly by the conveyor and dumped into the body of the truck. This type of truck is shown, for example, in the KurtZ-Ottoson Patent No. 2,224,789, dated December 10, 1940. In this patent, the conveyor is driven by hydraulic means.

The present invention is an improvement over the loading boot and cooperating, resiliently mounted flights, shown in the patent of Loron G. Kurtz and Carl C. Ottoson, filed May. 9, 1940, patented December 16, 1941, No. 2,266,645. The main structural difference of the present invention over that of the patent is that in the present invention the transverse shaft and traction wheels in the boot for the conveyor chains are omitted. In the present invention, in place of the sprocket wheels, special guideways for the conveyor chains are provided, together with abutments for the conveyor flights, carried on the side walls of the boot.

With the loading boot assembly of the present invention, the conveyor is guided within the boot entirely by these guideways on the side walls of the boot, the usual transverse shaft and traction wheels carried thereby being omitted entirely. This omission of the transverse shaft greatly facilitates the handling of larger pieces of refuse. The omission of this drive shaft, of course, eliminates the problem caused by wire, rope, rags and the like winding around such a shaft.

The omission of the transverse shaft gives more space in the boot, that is to say, increases its intake capacity, so that boxes, cans and cartons of substantial size can be put into the boot. However, in order to handle such large objects effectively, they must be crushed, and this is done by providing pivoted and resiliently mounted flights, and by providing abutments against which the flights engage to give a crushing effect.

When a bulky piece of refuse is put into the boot, it pushes against a conveyor flight, forcing it upwardly against its springs which provide a resilient mounting therefor; the piece of refuse is thus caught in a jaw, the upper part of which is the conveyor flight and the lower part of which is the inside of the boot. This jaw can continue to open until the 'flight engages its abutments. The flight continues to move, however, toward the bottom of the conveyor, the clearance between the flight and the inside of the boot progressively getting smaller, and so the jaw contracts and crushes and breaks the bulky piece of refuse so that it can be carried upwardly into the body of the truck.

If it should happen that the piece of refuse is beyond the power of the jaw to crush it, the conveyor will jam and stop. However, the conveyor is hydraulically driven and any tendency of a part to break due to such a jam, is preventedby the use of a by-pass overload valve; a stoppage may also usually be overcome by reversing the conveyor. The use of by-pass overload and reversing valves in the hydraulic drive for such purposes is described and claimed in the Kurtz-0ttoson Patent No. 2,224,789, of December 10, 1940.

Further advantages of structure and operation will be described in connection with the accompanying drawings, illustrating the present preferred embodiments of the invention.

In the drawings:

Figure 1 is a rear view of a refuse collecting truck provided with the loading boot assembly of the present invention;

Figure 2 is a sectional view through the boot on the line 2-2 of Fig. 6;

Figures 3, 4 and 5 are vertical sections through 'three different forms of abutments; and

Figure 6 is a vertical section, taken from one side, on line 66 of Fig. 2.

Referring now to these drawings, in which similar reference characters indicate similar parts, the refuse collecting truck has the usual dump body 2 and pivoted tail gate 4, in which an endless conveyor operates, as more fully described in the Kurtz-Ottoson Patent No. 2,224,789.

At its lower end, the tail gate is provided with a loadin boot 6, of strong, heavy metal, rigidly secured to the lower end of the tail gate. The boot 6 comprises a trough-like member 8 having sloping walls and made of heavy metal, welded to and braced by the vertical side walls It].

Strongly secured to each side wall I0 is a box- I like guide indicated generally at l2, for the conin Fig. 6, which guicleways are carried by the side walls In of the boot. No transverse shaft through the boot is provided or is necessary.

lhe abutments for limiting the upward pivotal movement of the conveyor flights will now be described. These abutment may be made in a number of different forms; they may be fixed, but preferably they are in the form of strongly mounted anti-friction rollers. In Fig. 3, the abutment 22 is of the fixed type and is carried by a stud 24. Stud 24 is mounted in a tubular sleeve 25, which passes through aligned apertures in the wall of guide l2 and in the wall ll] of the boot and is anchored by welding at 26 and by nut 21. The stud is secured in place on sleeve 25 by nut 28.

In Fig. 4, the abutment is of the roller type; roller 34 and its stud 36 are secured by nut 38 to a bushing 40, and these rotate in a fixed sleeve 42, which passes through aligned apertures in ll] and I2. Sleeve 42 is welded at 43 to guide [2 and secured to the side wall In by a cap nut 44. The stud 36 may be provided with oil or grease passages 45, to which lubricant may be supplied through the fitting 45.

In Fig. 5, the abutment comprises a roller 48 journaled on the end of a fixed stud 50 which passes through aligned apertures in It] and 12. This stud is held in place by welds i and by the head 52 of a hollow rod 54. Rod 54 is held in stud 50 by a nut 53 and is provided with a grease fitting 54' for providing grease to passageways 55 in the stud for lubricating the roller 43.

The conveyor of the present invention is preferably of the type shown in the aforesaid Patent 2,266,645, and comprises the usual rollers 58 linked together by pivot pins to and straps 62. Supported on the pins 60 are box-like spring housings 64, containing springs of any suitable kind for exerting spring pressure in a counterclockwise direction, as seen in Figure 6, on the rearwardly extending flight supporting arms 66. Such springs may be tension, compression or torsional and abutments maybe provided as necessary. Supported by the arms 66 at the ends thereof, behind the pivots 60, there is a plurality of boxlike flights 68, the box-like construction making them very rigid. In other words, the flights are pivoted on axes an appreciable distance ahead of the flight itself.

The lower transverse edge 10 of each flight preferably clears the bottom of the boot a small amount. The normal path of the lower edge 10 of the flights is shown by the broken line 12.

From an inspection of Figure 6, it will be clear that the left hand sloping wall 8 of the boot 6 cooperates with each flight 68 to form a jaw, the lower member of the jaw, namely, the boot, being fixed, while the upper member, namely, the flight, as it travels through the boot, will serve to bite or crush against anything that might be in this jaw. When a bulky piece of material such as a can, box, or, as illustrated in Figure 6, a board 14, is put into the boot in an initial position 14a,

the edge 10 of the flight will-engage against such board or other obstruction and will itself be pushed upwardly, against its spring mounting, in a clockwise direction, to successive positions, one of which is shown at 1.5, until the upper edge of the flight comes into engagement with a solid abutment 34, as shown in cross section in Figure 6, so that it cannot pivot any further. The flight continues to move, and since it cannot swing upwardly any more, its lower edge Ill exerts a powerful force against the obstruction l4 and crushes or breaks it, and successive flights continue this breaking or crushing operation until the obstruction is broken up to a size suflicient to permit it to pass upwardly into the truck body.

The parts thus described are, of course, strongly made, so as to withstand the rather considerable stresses to which these parts are subjected in crushing boxes, cans, and the like. Satisfactory results have been accomplished in actual practice.

As mentioned earlier in the specification, if the object being crushed causes the conveyor to jam and stop, any breakage that might ordinarily ensue is taken care of by suitable safety mechanism, such as a by-pass overload valve as shown in the Kurtz-Ottoson Patent No. 2,224,789. In practice, such a jam can usually be overcome simply by one or two short successive reversals of the conveyor, that is, by moving it backwardly a foot or two and starting it up again, by means of a reversing valve also shown in the Kurtz-Ottoson patent.

There has thus been described a loading boot assembly which dispenses with the use of a transverse shaft through the boot and which is provided with flights, preferably resiliently mounted, which move against limiting abutments whereby they will crush to workable size refuse articles of a bulky nature. The conveyor will, of course, handle ordinary smaller sized refuse in the usual way.

While the present preferred embodiments of the invention have been described in some detail, it should be understood that the invention is not limited to these details but may be carried out in other ways,

I claim as my invention:

1. A loading boot assembly comprising, in combination with a loading boot, an endless conveyor operable therein, fixed guide means carried by the side walls of the boot, for guiding the conveyor within the boot, pivoted flights carried by the conveyor and forming a part thereof, and abutment means, rigidly supported by said fixed guide means and extending laterally and inwardly therefrom and leaving the middle of the boot clear, for limiting the pivotal movement of the flights when they are forced upwardly by refuse material in the boot.

2. A loading boot assembly comprising, in combination with a rigidly mounted loading boot, an

endless conveyor operable therein, fixed guide means, fixed to the side walls of the boot, for guiding the conveyor within the boot, pivoted flights carried by the conveyor and forming a part thereof, and abutment means, supported jointly by said fixed guide means and the adjacent side wall of the boot and projecting inwardly for only a short distance, leaving the middle of'the boot clear, for limiting the pivotal movement of the flights when they are forced upwardly by refuse material in the boot.

3. A loading boot assembly for use with an endless conveyor, comprising, in combination, a rigidly mounted loading boot, box-like guide members fixed to the inside of the side Walls of the boot, for guiding the conveyor for reversing its direction of travel in the boot, pivoted flights carried by the conveyor, and abutment means carried by said guide members, and projecting inwardly for only a short distance, leaving the middle of the boot clear, for limiting the pivotal movement of the flights within the boot.

4. A loading boot assembly for use with an endless conveyor, comprising, in combination with the loading boot, box-like guide members fixed on the inside of the; side walls of the boot, for

guiding the conveyor for reversing its direction of travel in the boot, pivoted flights carried by the conveyor, and abutment means carried by said fixed guide members and extending laterally and inwardly therefrom, and projecting inwardly for only a short distance, leaving the middle of the boot clear, for limiting the pivotal movement of the flights within the boot.

5. A loading boot assembly for use with an endless conveyor, comprising, in combination with the loading boot, box-like guide members fixed on the inside of the side walls of the boot, for guiding the conveyor as it reverses its direction of travel in the boot, pivoted and resiliently mounted flights carried by the conveyor, and abutment means carried by said fixed guide members and extending laterally and inwardly therefrom, and projecting inwardly for only a short distance, leaving the middle of the boot clear, for limiting the pivotal movement of the flights within the boot.

6. A loading boot assembly for use with an endless conveyor, comprising, in combination with a rigidly mounted loading boot, box-like guide members fixed on the inside of the side walls of the boot, for guiding the conveyor as it reverses its direction of travel in the boot, pivoted flights carried by the conveyor, and abutment means supported jointly by said fixed guide members and the adjacent side wall of the boot, and projecting inwardly for only a short distance, leaving the middle of the boot clear, for limiting the pivotal movement of the flights within the boot.

'7. A loading boot assembly for use with an endless conveyor, comprising, in combination with the loading boot, flxed box-like guide members carried on the inside of the side walls of the boot, for guiding the conveyor as it reverses its direction of travel in the boot, pivoted flights carried by the conveyor, and abutment means including rotatably mounted abutment forming elements supported jointly by said fixed guide members and the adjacent side wall of the boot, and extending laterally and inwardly from said guide members, for only a short distance, leaving the middle of the boot clear for limiting the pivotal movement of the flights within the boot.

8. A loading boot assembly for use with an endless conveyor, comprising, in combination a rigidly mounted loading boot, fixed box-like guide members carried on the inside of the side walls of the boot, for guiding the conveyor as it reverses its direction of travel in the boot, pivoted flights carried by the conveyor, abutment means including rotatably mounted abutment forming elements supported jointly by said fixed guide members and the adjacent side wall of the boot, and extending laterally and inwardly from said guide members for only a short distance, leaving the middle of the boot clear for limiting the pivotal movement of the flights within the boot, and means for lubricating said rotatably mounted elements.

CARL C. OTTOSON. 

